


Zombies

by VampirePaladin



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 22:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16669309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/pseuds/VampirePaladin
Summary: Nina in the zombie apocalypse.





	Zombies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unforgotten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unforgotten/gifts).



“Nina, don’t look back, baby,” Erik yelled as he held his daughter’s hand tight. He pulled her out the front door of their home, moving so fast that Nina struggled to keep up with him.

“But Mama is back there,” Nina said. She tried to look back over her shoulder but another tug from Erik kept her moving forward, away from the welcoming light of the house and towards the car that was nestled in the night’s darkness.

“That isn’t Mom,” Erik said. He was looking all around them, jumping at any sound in the darkness. 

When they got to the car Erik stopped to give a quick look under and around it as he grabbed the keys out of his pocket. He didn’t move to unlock the doors himself. One second they were locked and the next they were unlocked and the doors were swinging open.

“Nina, get in passenger seat,” Erik said. He was getting into the driver seat and was already putting the keys in the ignition.

Nina did as she was told and got in on the other side. She reached for the door but it shut without her touching it.

Erik didn’t wait. He was driving away from the house as the shambling form of the zombie that had once been Magda staggered out of the house. Maybe if she had gotten near Nina Erik would have been able to kill her, but he couldn’t do it to save his own life.

They drove together down the dark roads, the only sound the car’s engine. Minutes passed as Erik drove the familiar route to the steel mill. He’d brought Nina there to see it once or twice. He had just turned the corner past a store when the road was blocked by a half dozen zombies.

Nina screamed at the sight of the people. Their flesh hung loosely off their body. Their vacant eyes turned towards the two humans. Gaping maws with blood and human flesh handing from them let loose moans if hunger.

A metal fence tore itself free from the ground and smashed into the zombies, knocking them off the road as Erik gunned it through.

Nina’s scream died into a small whimper of fear and then disappeared. She was scared, but she also knew that she was with her father and as long as they were together that she’d be safe.

* * *

“What are you working on, Papa?” Nina asked as she dropped next to him on the floor of the manager’s office in the steel mill. 

“It’s a letter to an old friend,” Erik said as he put an arm around Nina and pulled her into a half hug as he continued writing.

From outside came the thumping of bodies on metal, but they’d been doing that for days now. Every door and the accessible windows had been blocked off by sheets of metal, leaving Erik and Nina safe inside the steel mill. 

“Papa, what’s going to happen to us?” Nina asked. 

“Well,” Erik set aside the pen and paper so that he could wrap his other arm around Nina, “we are going to go to an airport and then we are going to get on an airplane to visit my friend Charles.”

“Who’s Charles?” Nina asked. She’d never heard of this friend of her father’s before. Honestly, she really hadn’t heard of any friends of his from before he met her mother, just stories of his childhood and then it skipped right to stories of him and her mother.

“He’s an idealist, wants to see the good in everybody. He even saw it in me when no one else did. Because he gave me a chance, I gave your mother a chance, she gave me a chance, and now I have a wonderful daughter,” Erik said.

“Why wouldn’t he see good in you?” Nina asked innocently.

“Because when I was younger, I was very angry, and that anger controlled me.” He placed a kiss on Nina’s forehead. “It’s getting late. Try and get some sleep. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow.”

* * *

“Run now,” Erik ordered.

Nina ran. At her side were a pair of police dogs that she had met on their way to the airport. Behind them the zombies came. Metal screeched as her father tore apart planes with his powers, using the wreckage to decimate the zombies coming at them. She scrambled up the steps leading into the plane, followed by her two new friends and her father.

With a wave of Erik’s hand, the stairs pulled away and the door shut, sealing off the cabin. The four of them were the only ones in the plane. 

Nina fell back as the plane shot forward. One of the dogs rushed over to her to check to see if she was hurt. Once she reassured him, the dog licked her face and curled up. Nina sat down in one of the chairs, watching her father. He was concentrating and as the plane leveled off she didn’t want to distract him.

The two dogs jumped up next to her and without meaning to, Nina fell asleep with the warm dogs on top of her. 

It was hours later that she woke up. 

Erik was sweeting. His face was pale.

Outside the window she could see the ocean as it gave way to land.

Then they were going down. They were going down too fast as Erik’s strength was giving out. Nina held on tightly to the dogs, trying to keep them from flying back. The plane crashed into the ground.

Nina let out a breath. She was alive and so were the dogs.

“Papa,” Nina called out as she rushed to her father’s side. 

He was pinned under wreckage. Erik was barely breathing. When Nina knelt at his side, her small hands struggling to pull her father free, he smiled at her.

“You’re alright?” he asked.

Nina just nodded as tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t trust herself to speak. The two dogs were at her side 

“Good. Nina, I need you to do something for me.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced the letter that he had been writing. “I need you to deliver this to my friend Charles Xavier. He lives in Westchester County, New York. Can you do that for me?”

Nina took the letter. The tears rolled down her face. “I love you, Papa.”

“I love you too, Nina.”

Erik sang to her one last time as he died. Nina buried her face in the fur of one of the dogs and cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

* * *

It took years to get to Westchester. The zombies made traveling slow and the danger from other survivors was even greater. Nina hadn’t been alone. The two police dogs from Poland were still with her and other animals had helped her avoid the worst of the danger and find both food and shelter.

What she found when she got to Xavier’s School for the Gifted was an oddly normal looking school barricaded with more defenses than she’d seen at any other outpost. She couldn’t see anyway to get in.

 _”You don’t get in.”_

“Who was that?” Nina asked. She looked down at one of the dogs who just gave her a short bark to say that he didn’t know.

 _”I’m a psychic. My name is Jean.”_ The voice in her head sounded feminine to Nina.

“My name is Nina. I… my father gave me a letter for Charles Xavier. The phonebook said he lived here. Can you let me in?”

_”Stay still.”_

Nina did as she was told. One moment she was standing outside the barricaded gates and the next she was inside of a room facing a red-haired young woman, a brown-haired young man with a pair of red tinted sunglasses, and moments later a silver haired man that for some reason reminded Nina of her father. The dogs were at Nina’s feet now, looking disoriented.

“You’re Jean?” Nina asked.

“That’s right,” Jean said with a warm smile. “These are Scott and Peter.”

“I have a letter for Charles Xavier,” Nina said as she took out the letter, now stained from being carried on her person as she trekked across the Eastern coast of the United States.

“Do you mind if we open it first?” Scott asked.

Nina nodded.

Jean took the letter from Nina and opened it up. Both Scott and Peter took a look at it. Peter made a face that Nina thought was surprise and something else that she couldn't figure out.

“I’m going to go help the students,” Peter said and with that he was gone.

“Did I do something to upset him?” Nina asked.

Jean shook her head, “No, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I just don’t think he was expecting to see who the letter was from,” Scott added.

Jean held out her hand to Nina, “I’ll take you to the Professor.” 

Nina nodded, taking the older woman’s hand, following her out of the meeting room that they had been and into a school full of bright, warm woods. There were people around, more than Nina had seen in years. The two dogs followed at her feet, but they were comfortable and gave no sign of danger.

Jean took Nina to an office and inside was a man in a wheelchair.

“Professor, Nina brought you a letter from Erik Lehnsherr,” Jean said as she handed over the letter.

“Hello Nina,” Charles said as he took the letter and read it over. Once he was done he set it aside, looked at Nina and said, “I am so sorry for your loss, but I am glad to see that Erik had found happiness with you and your mother. I’d like to extend an invitation for you to stay here.”

Nina had spent years trying to fulfill her father’s last request and now she had nothing else to do but to survive. With no other options before her, at least none that were better, she accepted the offer to stay.

* * *

Nina hit the ground at the mental command of her girlfriend. The gunshots of Jean’s gun rang out, followed by the roar of a bear that had heard Nina’s mental call for help and was charging at the zombies.

She pushed herself back up to her feet as Jean grabbed her arm and pulled her faster. 

“Are you hurt?” Jean asked.

“No,” Nina said, but that wasn’t going to be true for much longer. Even with the help of the bear the crowd of zombies around them was growing. 

Jean was using the telekinetic half of her powers to keep the area around them clear, but that wasn’t going to be enough.

“This way,” Nina said as she took Jean’s hand and ran. She’d seen a narrow gap in the zombies, but it was more than that.

The ground started to shake as Nina pulled Jean against a brick wall. Dozens of heads of cattle came stampeding down the street, trampling the zombies that had been gathering around them. Nina breathed out words of thanks for the her and the bear that had come to her aide.

“Are you hurt?” Nina asked Jean, echoing the sentiment that had been expressed to her.

“No, I don’t think so,” Jean said.

The two women looked at each other for a moment, silent, and then they hugged one another as relief that they were still alive washed over the two of them.

“Mein Gott, what was that?” came Kurt’s voice over the radio.

Jean pulled her own radio out and said, “We got cornered, but Nina’s friends helped us deal with the situation.”

“That drew a lot of attention,” said Scott, ever the responsible leader. “Rendezvous back at the vehicles.”

* * *

Nina dropped into bed next to Jean. She cuddled close to her as Jean looked through old medical textbooks. Jean had been taking it upon herself to learn medicine so that Hank wouldn’t be their only medic. Nina thought it was amazing how much Jean did. 

“What you do is amazing too,” Jean said.

“In my head again?” Nina asked.

“You have a very loud mind.”

Nina thought the reason her mind was so loud to Jean was because of how she communicated with animals, but she wasn’t sure. She was the only one with her ability here, not even her half-brother or half-sister shared anything like it.

“What do you think of the new arrivals?” Jean asked.

“Rogue seems lost and confused, but that happens to many mutants when they awaken to their powers. She mentioned that she was driven out of the survivor camp she lived in when she was discovered,” Jean said as she set aside her books.

Nina sighed. You’d think that with zombies roaming the Earth that people would be more worried about things other than mutants, but as the zombies had continued to exist humans had found ways to keep on living even with the threat. Things would never go back to what they used to be and there would always be danger from zombies, but it was mind blowing how much old-fashioned prejudice managed to endure.

“What do you think of Logan?” Nina asked.

Jean pulled Nina close, kissed her on the lips. “He’s interested in me, but I think you’re much cuter.”

Nina returned the kiss and wrapped her arms around Jean, her family.


End file.
